Olympics included boxing, jumping, discus and javelin, which gladly did include clothing. The surprising exception to this events list is the marathon race. This famous run, including the torch, were never part of ancient Olympics, and were not added to the venue until over 1500 years later.
The ancient games lasted nearly 1200 years, from at least 776 BC to 393 AD, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the games because he felt they were pagan and evil. And so the Olympic Games slept for over a thousand years until 1892, when a young Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin proposed the idea at a meeting of the Union des Sports Athletiques in Paris. His pitch failed miserably. But ever the optimist, Pierre tried again two years later, this time in front a meeting of 79 delegates representing 9 countries. The delegates voted unanimously in favor of the revitalization, and so, in 1896 in the city of Athens, the Olympics were reborn.
The 1896 games were a disaster. As the games were poorly publicized, they never received the international support needed. Contestants were not backed by their respective countries, and in fact were forced to travel to Greece at their own expense. Several of the contestants were tourists who just happened to be in Greece on holiday.
Due to poor planning, the 1896 games was held in very cold weather, though it consisted entirely of “summer” events. In her book First to the Wall, 100 Years of Olympic Swimming, Kelly Gonsalves describes the first swimming event: “Not only did they battle 12-foot waves, but the weather in Greece was unusually cold and the water was a frigid 55 degrees Fahrenheit.” The book goes on to tell the story of Garner Williams, an American Swimmer,